Rachel and Deanna are two friends I met through Addie’s local Food Bloggers Facebook group. I got to know them during the field trip to Spicewood Vineyards and discovered that Deanna and I had met before when she generously offered me a drinkable yogurt to sample at Whole Foods.

Rachel suggested that we try the Daily Juice Cafe — the first raw foods restaurant in Austin that is co-owned by the guy who runs the two other Daily Juice locations. It’s been open for about a month and is located in an old car repair shop on 45th and Duval. Their hours are 7 a.m. – 9 p.m. every day of the week.

Rachel is a chef, blogger, and personal chef with a specialty in local, allergy-friendly, healthy food. She writes about her lifestyle and recipes in her blog, The Friendly Kitchen.

Deanna ate only raw foods for a year and a half and Rachel ran the Whole Foods Raw Bar so I knew I was in good hands for my first-ever experience.

Raw Foodists eat all fruits, vegetables, sprouts, nuts, seeds, grains, sea vegetables, and other organic/natural foods that have not been processed. They soak nuts, seeds and grains before eating them and dehydrate some foods to create a variety of textures.

It’s a total lifestyle and those that eat only raw feel that it provides them with more energy, better health, clear thinking, and more. Many go so far as to live without electricity so as to be as natural as possible.

The cafe focuses on raw entrees and desserts and also serves fresh juices. James, another food blogger, met us there and we decided to share 4 entrees — this included the Texicali Taco Plate, Lasagna, BBQ Coconut Sandwich and Pad Thai. The dishes seemed pretty reasonable since most ingredients are organic and many are expensive and exotic — around $12 for entrees and $6 for desserts.

The ingredients in my two favorite dishes are below:

Texicali Taco Plate
cilantro, coconut, raw-tillas (made from dehydrated raw ingredients), walnut chorizo, guacamole, sprouts, scallions, thai peanut ginger sauce.

Lasagna
zucchini and yellow squash noodles stacked between raw cashew macadamia ricotta, fresh basil pesto, tomatoes, pickled onions. Served with marinated spinach and pine nuts.

For dessert we shared a raw chocolate bar, banana cream pie, and pumpkin pie — everything we ate was never baked or heated beyond 115 degrees. Most everything tasted amazing and I was fascinated by how the many different flavors and textures were created.

While Daily Juice Cafe is first to the scene, they will have competition in early 2009 from Beets: A Living Foods Cafe. The Web site says that it will open in January at 5th and West Lynn and will offer breakfast and lunch. The food will feature organic and local products and is the baby of raw food chef Sylvia Heisey.

We finished our meal at around closing and the staff invited us to stick around to join the drum circle that was arriving to jam in a side room. I must admit this was the first time I was invited to join a drum circle in a restaurant! There were some extra drums so we got to bang away with the group. It was so much fun!

While I don’t anticipate becoming 100% raw anytime soon, the meal was an eye-opening experience that I will definitely repeat again. In fact, today I stopped by the Daily Juice on Barton Springs Road for a Mr. Resister – a 1 oz. shot of lemon juice, agave nectar, cayenne pepper, and some other stuff to rid me of the sore throat I woke up with.

What do you think of the Raw Foods lifestyle? Do you think it’s healthy/unhealthy?